It’s been working great for me with my 401k — and my hockey jersey collection — where I just keep adding to the pile and the value consistantly keeps getting bigger and bigger.

That’s not how it works with individual stocks.

As a mostly absent portfolio manager, I have no desire to be a day-trader or anything but I totally understand the concept of buy-low-and-sell-high.

I know how that works and how it leads to wealth at a much advanced pace.

I just never pull the trigger. I grow too attached or something.

Looking back on my childhood, we moved every few years to a new house. Each subsequent move was to a bigger and better house.

I wasn’t privy to the mortgage bill or anything, since I was only 7 years old by the time we hit the fourth house, but I do see how you can go from house-to-house, getting bigger and better along the way, while keeping your mortgage bill roughly the same.

The size of the house doesn’t determine the size of the mortgage — the folks accross the street from us paid DOUBLE what we did for a similar but smaller house.

I’d bet if you compared our two mortgages, you’d be hard pressed to determine that we live in the same neighborhood.

Buy low, sell high. That’s the path to take…up, and up, and up…

I know that.

Yet I sit in my first and only house today — knowing full well that I can technically afford something twice the size and, by now, could probably be in something three times the size.

And even though the guy on the dime is relatively contemporary in comparison to the others, it’s almost as if no one knows who he is at all… Crazy — 4 terms as President of the United States less than 100 years ago and over 50% of the population have no idea who you are…

I’ll be honest, though… I’ve always though the profile on the dime was a better likeness of Pope John Paul II.

Anyway, they took the Eagle off of the quarter a few years ago when they started doing the State thing — how they managed that is a mystery — let’s go all out and get some fresh designs in order…

Oh, who am I kidding… Bitcoins are going to replace it all anyway before long…

Of late, as in just over the past couple weeks, the local television newscasts have neen using the “block” term when reporting stories — usually of the crime or housefire variety.

Makes total sense in a big city where the streets are laid out in a grid — “Armed robbery reported on the 1200-block of Michigan Ave…” People know where that is, well, local folks do, anyway…

But here in Connecticut, where the main roads are all laid out following some really terrible city planning that dates back to the 1700’s (and secondary roads are just squeezed in), well, this “style” of reporting is really out of place.

The street I live on doesn’t even have an address number that reaches 100. Do I live on the zero block?

And, really, even within the borders of our wannabe BIG cities, I’d venture to say that there are more cul-de-sacs than grid like blocks.

I don’t think local law enforcement even refers to ### blocks.

In the era of Google maps and GPS units, I dunno, in addition to being useless in this part of the country, the “block” reference seems really dated.

Maybe it’s just me?

From the 0 Block of Smurfberry Lane, this is Brainy reporting for PIAC.

And a whole boatload of spam comments regarding expensive sneakers, weight loss drugs, and forex schemes. I’ll clean it all up when I get a chance…

First, though, I need to get everyone still stopping by up to speed on what’s happened to my finances.

See, I lost my focus, my motivation, my direction, and as a result, a lot of my financial comfort.

No, I’m not in dire straits. Far from it, but I’m also a long way off from where I’d like to be.

Where I should be.

Where I could have been, you know, had I not stopped holding myself accountable here.

I do still track my finances.

I still check my balances multiple times per day. And, yes, I’m still paying my bills on time.

I’m just not moving towards any kind of goal… like a $1 million net worth (long since abandoned), zero credit card debt, or that 3-car garage we’d like.

So, here we go, starting over in a way…

Here’s the bad news…and what needs to be corrected in a hurry.

I’m currently carrying in excess of $6k in credit card debt. Debt that I’m paying finance charges on — that hasn’t happened to me in YEARS?!

I have a big auto loan balance. Again, not really anything unusual in the grand scheme of things but we’d grown accustomed to owning our cars outright. Prior to the past couple months, I’d forgotten what it was like to have a car payment and, I’ll tell ya, it’s really crampin’ my stlye.

My savings account has been tapped out so there isn’t any kind of back-up reserve. Much of that is due to the fact that I just paid my property taxes this week but… well, it’s troubling me to not having *any* emergency money when it’s just always been there for the past few years.

So, I’m not going to tiptoe around how I got here — I spent a lot of money and depleted my reserves. Pretty obvious.